Ottoman bridge

Up at the crack of silly o'clock to get a flight at 0630 from Gatwick to Dubrovnik, where we met the rest of our walking group (15 of us altogether) and our guides Samer and Srdjan. Samer was the only one we already knew as he led the snowshoeing trip we did last year (pics are well worth a look starting here). He's a great guy and passionate about his beautiful country.
Didn't hang about but quickly got into Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). This part is Herzegovina - purely a geographical division, unlike other, better-known, divisions in the country.
Drove to Trebinje, checked into hotel, had lunch then a visit to a winery where there was plenty of the local specialities to sample - great way to start a holiday! Then Mrs RT and I had a stroll by the river to this bridge.

The people of BiH are partly Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks - the largest single group), partly Croats (Catholic Christian), partly Serbs (Orthodox Christian) - but all ethnically the same. The division between Catholic and Orthodox came about because the division of the Roman Empire into west and east went right down the middle of the Balkan peninsula; the Muslims because the country was ruled by the Ottoman Turks from 1463-1878.
There are some beautiful Ottoman bridges in the country -
the best known in Mostar (we'll come to that in a few days);
one in Visegrad which inspired the novel The Bridge over the Drina by Bosnia's only Nobel Literature Prize winner Ivo Andric (what do you mean you've never heard of it? I can't tell you to read it because I haven't myself, but I hope to soon);
and this asymmetrical beauty in Trebinje.

I'll just add for now that the different groups all mixed until 1991, and most are trying to do the same now. Of our group leaders, Samer is Muslim (but just calls himself Bosnian rather than Bosniak) and Srdjan is a Bosnian Serb. Samer was a teenager in the war (whenever they talk about the war they mean 1992-95), Srdjan a child. Now they and many others are trying to work together to rebuild the country - but not getting much help from the politicians.

PS I've just ordered that book from the tax-dodging scum A****n.